Pulled kicking and screaming into the modern world of heroes and champions as it may be, Quake is back. What that means is that Quake Champions will need Duel, the fast-paced, impossibly skill-testing one-on-one mode that is still almost unmatched in the world of eSports. It’s being worked on right now and Tim Willits, studio director over at the developer, has a few, tantalising hints to give on it.

“There is a hole with one-versus-one, it's missing from first-person eSports,” says Willits at PAX East, where the game is being demoed publically for the first time. “The title fights are great for Quake so our Duel mode is going to be uniquely Quake, but will still incorporate the champions.”

This may disappoint some who were hoping Quake Champions would remain true to the first half of its name for the most competitive mode. However, having now played it - for which we’ll bring you a proper preview soon - they are a significant modification to the formula, but not one that utterly changes it. Abilities or differences in move speed and air control are all simply another tool.

Plus, the pros are on board. “We have Duels [working in-game] but we need to get more pro players to play it, just to make sure they like it. We have some coming up to id next week,” explains Willits. He also mentions that id were at IEM Katowice, with a small room at the back of the business area not open to press or general public. This was similar to how the game was tested around QuakeCon.

“We've been listening to [the pros] too, at Quakecon last year the pro players came in, they played our team mode and they were like 'yeah you gotta change this', we said okay, we started changing it,” remembers Willits.

We’re taking bets as to how this new Duel will be built in the comments below. Perhaps a mirror system where characters are treated like maps, both players picking the same one to test their skill? Or some sort of pick/ban, where you have a range of champions to play, deciding depending on map? We’ll find out more soon.

yea so there goes the promise of "classic mode" with champions in duel mode....

Why cant they just fucking give us what we want and experiment along side... Give us a QW mode, QL mode, CPM mode and thats it. Its justt some different settings, it would be the simplest thing to do and make every quakers dream come true...

but no, you go on and transform our holy baby into a moba, knowing nothing on earth gets more disdain than a moba for a quake player...

All you have to do is agree not to use abilities, so it would be a test of staying true to your word as well as shooting skills. The drama when someone cheats a duel like this would be an instant extra 5k twitch.tv viewers too, and maybe in the end xXx420xMarkxCubanx666xXx would change his mind about gaming being "just a niche market".